Embrace Moi

I got caught chatting with my girlfriend. We were in the same room together. Both sitting there. Chatting away.

Online!

Emoticons. Pictures being sent back and forth. It was embarrassing. Or awesome! Anyway there is something we have to talk about now. It’s this question of what is up with young people’s obsession with chatting, texting, messaging, and whatever else they invent next week’ing.

The conventional wisdom is that people who are shy or otherwise unable to articulate or satisfy their own egos in real conversation, will at first resort, and then attach to alternative modes of expression.

But maybe it’s not that simple. Yes, some people are shy. And they find themselves empowered by the veil of the internet. This is a whole nother topic (see other topic). But it definitely isn’t always the case. I myself am completely attractive. A real specimen in my own mind. And yet I love engaging in these alternative forms of communication. Why?

I have some ideas.

First, there is the ability to use a more flexible ever-expanding language. This includes neologisms. You would never write those in a letter. A tree died for that paper and what kind of jerk writes silly made up words on paper? But on email? Shit, you’ll delete it eventually. Let the NSA struggle with Osama-lama-ding-dong. I don’t care. It’s email. And emoticons. First developed as a crutch because none of us could express ourselves for shit in the early days, but now they’re kind of like little dried spices you throw into your stew at the last minute, not because—well, ok, because they’re there—but I don’t know, maybe they help? Anyway the sense of innovation and freedom in language is liberating, inspiring and it’s too late to stop it.

Second, there is the ability to embed links to multimedia—pictures, sounds, movies—which can go far in helping us make our point. Before we had to just say, “remember that time in Caddyshack when Bill Murray says…” and hope the other person doesn’t admit they haven’t seen the film, which is always a very bad moment. Course I must say I’ve been spared many of what would have been miserable relationships when the girl I was with was forced to admit she had never seen Star Wars. One girl actually—I kid you not—said she had seen Star Wars but didn’t like it. ?!?@$# Anyway, yeah, so quotes. Awesome.

Blogging. Awesome. The fact that people can comment on your thoughts, ideas, feelings “while you were out” is totally awesome. I imagine before, and maybe even now in some red states, something like a town hall with a big bulletin board made from cork. In college we had such a thing where people could exhibit displays or writings and other people could stick little post-it notes in response. It was anonymous. But someone who didn’t like a comment could walk by, also anonymously, and simply remove the note. That’s censorship! Now that power is safely where it belongs. In my hands. I have sole power to remove my friends’ comments if I don’t like them anymore (the comments, not the friends; I never liked them). So that’s an advance. Really nothing is too much changed here except the technology has dramatically altered both the reach and ease of this type of thought collaboration. And plus there’s really not too much you can fit on a post-it note. I can write blogs the size of a telephone book, and nobody seems to care. It’s great.

So listen up, talking and conversations and letter writing. The new thing is here. And it ain’t going away. Until something better comes along.

For more see: this clip from that Godard Film. And this clip from Tarkovsky’s Mirror.